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The world is watching

The world’s attention will focus on Capitol Hill and then on New York this morning, as Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. testifies to Congress at 9:30 a.m., followed by President Bush’s speech to the United Nations at 10:30.

The president will make comments to the press about the economy earlier this morning, around 8:30, at the top of his first meeting ever with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

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If the current economic crisis had not interfered, the president’s speech this morning would have been a legacy speech, with all of the focus on his past eight years in office, and with a few attempts to shape the main frozen crises currently at large: Russia and Georgia, Iran, and North Korea.

But with the U.S. economy teetering, and the administration’s $700 billion rescue plan hitting some resistance in Congress, world leaders are looking to Bush for reassurances that things are not going to get worse.